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Katniss is sitting out on the porch, as usual. It's better, lately, now that she'll spend the days sitting outside, talking to the neighbors who come to pick up bread, getting some fresh air and sunlight. It's a marked improvement from the first few months back in District 12, when she was still almost catatonic on the morphling all the time, and wouldn't dare leave the house.
It's the two of them, now, inside Peeta's house in the Victor's Village, Katniss moving her things into his house and giving up her house to another family displaced from the bombing. "I don't want to go back there," she had said, "Not alone."
"Thirsty?" he asks, bringing her a glass of water. She shrugs, but takes the glass, sipping then placing it down on the wooden floor of the porch. It's chilly now in November, so she's wrapped in a blanket on the bench they have sitting out there. He worries what she'll do when it becomes too cold to sit outside, if she'll become reclusive again, too stuck in her own mind to even speak to him.
"Who is that?" Katniss asks, looking down the path. The Victor's Village was small, just a half dozen houses and now all were occupied, but Peeta kept a large garden and the plants blocked a good portion of their view until people were close by. He looks, and sees Haymitch turning into their yard, with someone beside him. It's a woman, at at first he thinks it's a stranger, but then, on second glance, he realizes they know each other fairly well.
"Johanna!" he calls, and she comes running up to him, meeting him at the bottom of the steps before the porch. He hugs her, pulling her off her feet, and it feels good to see a familiar face after so long. She's hidden in baggy clothes, but the shape of her is unexpected, too many bones and angles where he expects softness and flesh. But she's smiling, and that's enough. That's more than Katniss, most days.
"Hi, Peeta!" She turns to Katniss, her features softening a bit. "Hi, Katniss."
Katniss doesn't respond, which Peeta wants to chastise her for, but he lets it go. He lets most things go, nowadays. Things that don't matter really don't matter, anymore. "How are you?" he asks Johanna, instead. He sees her wince, just a little shift of her chest and an odd blink that he's come to know meant that something bad was happening in her head, but she barely takes a beat before she replies, the smile still there.
"Been ok. I was down in District 2, but I got run out of town over some morphling, so I need to hide out here for a while."
She says it casually, but he assumes it's more serious than it sounds. He also wonders how often she's been using morphling. Katniss had finally stopped in July, after the most painful parts of her burns had healed, and they had a serious talk about how the thing she was using the morphling for wasn't physical pain anymore. At least he'd gotten through to her on that one particular point. He liked Johanna, but he didn't particularly want her around if she was going to be a bad influence on Katniss.
Peeta makes eye contact with Haymitch for a moment, but his expression is unreadable. Peeta wonders if he's just as in the dark. Johanna could be like that, light as a feather or angry as could be, but either way never actually letting anyone in. "Well, it's good to see you," Peeta says. "Should I make us all dinner?"
They go inside, Peeta pouring them each a glass of wine, and he starts in on dinner. Food isn't exactly plentiful in District 12, but there's rations from the Capitol, and they have the food they harvested just last month, so there's enough. No one will be going hungry this winter, at least. "All we drank in 2 was wine," Johanna says, laughing a bit as she sips it.
Her voice is strange to hear, when he hasn't heard it for a while. The time when he heard her the most was in that prison, the echo in a dream telling him 'Katniss is not a mutt' or 'The Capitol are the ones doing this, they're evil'. It's strange to even look at her smiling, when he was so used to hearing her scream. He turns away to work on the meal.
"Wow, you've been busy," Haymitch says, as they sit at the counter, looking into the kitchen. There is no bakery anymore, just his house, so he does the baking for the village in his own kitchen. He can get 8 loaves in the oven at a time, 50 or 60 loaves a day. The counters are covered in flour, pans he needs to wash, other mess from his baking, and he clears it aside as he works.
"Yeah, more and more people are coming by, needing bread. Sometimes I just sell them starter to make at home, but they're busy, they all work, so it's easiest if they can just buy a ready-made loaf."
Johanna just watches him and smiles politely, finishing her wine and pouring herself another glass. Katniss is leaning in the doorframe, watching Haymitch and Johanna, but quiet as always. "Katniss, do you know anyone with some spare clothes?" Johanna asks. "I can't get through a stay here with Haymitch's oversized cast-offs."
Katniss's jaw stiffens, but Peeta can't tell if it's just from being addressed, or if she's considering the leftover clothes she has: her mother's, her sister's. "I… I have some things I've outgrown," she says.
Johanna half-opens her mouth, perhaps to protest getting hand-me-downs from someone years younger, but the truth is that Katniss is taller than her now, so she smiles, nodding. "Sure, thanks. Should we get them before we eat?"
They disappear upstairs, and Peeta is left with Haymitch. Peeta turns back to the stove, and Haymitch moves to the cabinet, taking down a bottle of white liquor from the top shelf. "I thought you were sober now," Peeta says.
"More or less," Haymitch replies, pouring two fingers into a glass. "I mean, you already poured me some wine."
This is a fair point, but as far as Peeta is concerned, a glass of wine with dinner is something different than the white liquor Haymitch preferred. "You nervous?" Peeta realizes this is a bold question, especially as someone half Haymitch's age, but he's feeling bold, now. He's survived the Games, twice, and the war. There has to be something in there that can make up some of the gap between them.
Haymitch shrugs. "Just… off-balance. I wasn't expecting her."
"How much trouble is she in?"
Haymitch shrugs, taking a swig of the liquor. He pulls out plates and silverware to get ready to set the table, or maybe it's just to make some noise to cover their conversation in case Katniss or Johanna were listening. "Hard to say. She's freaked with the possibility of going to prison."
Peeta meets Haymitch's eye, and for a moment, they're both thinking of that place, that rotten Capitol dungeon where he had been kept with Johanna, where they had been starved and tortured for over a month. "Can't blame her," Peeta says. "She was arrested, then?"
Haymitch nods, curtly. "Enobaria helped her skip town."
Naturally, Enobaria would. Even if she wasn't aligned with the rebels during the war, she was down in that prison, too, she knew what it was like. She would help Johanna escape from hell, or something that would make her feel like she was returning to hell. Peeta would do the same for Enobaria, and he didn't particularly like her.
Johanna and Katniss return a few minutes later, Johanna with a canvas bag of clothes to take back with her. They sit to eat around Peeta and Katniss's small table, and Peeta brings out the food, just a simple meal of soup with pasta, vegetables, and beans, fresh bread, and a second bottle of wine.
"Did you see Gale?"
These are the first words Katniss has spoken to any of them directly, and Johanna nearly chokes on her soup. She puts her spoon down, taking a sip of her wine to clear her throat, and still she's a bit red,so she pulls off Haymitch's sweater.
Peeta can see it - the distinctive look of her left arm, veins upset from her pushing morphling into them too many times - and he sees Katniss staring at the spot as well. But Johanna doesn't seem to notice, grappling with the question as she is. "I saw him, yes," she says, after a pause that felt like minutes. "He's kind of a big deal there, now."
"What do you mean?" Katniss is leaning forward now, and this is the most engaged Peeta has seen her about anything in months. Haymitch's jaw is clenched, and he's paused with his grip white-knuckled on his spoon, watching Katniss.
Johanna tucks her hands in her lap, obviously giving up on dinner. She looks like she regrets this path of conversation, but isn't quite clever enough to figure out a way out. "He's been promoted to transitional director of the infantry. His job is to try to figure out how to make the District 13 rebel military and the remains of the Peacekeepers into one cohesive military. Baria and I would see him in the city center, at the bars, or just on television."
Katniss stands abruptly, jostling the whole table. Her brow is furrowed, like she simply can't comprehend what she's just been told. She leans forward, towards Johanna. "That's disgusting," she says, and turns and walks back upstairs.
The three of them are silent for a few moments, and then Johanna stands, too. "Thank for dinner, Peeta, but I think I've overstayed my welcome. I'll go ahead and head back to Haymitch's first." She takes the canvas bag and leaves, and he's once again just left with Haymitch.
Peeta is a little unsure of what to make of everything. Katniss had asked, in the first place, Johanna had merely answered her question. But Johanna should have known Katniss would be sensitive to news about Gale, he thinks. Johanna was always like that, he remembers now. Unrepentant, abrasive. Expecting everyone to be able to take on tremendous amounts, just because she's had to.
"Want me to talk to Katniss?" Haymitch offers.
This frustrates Peeta, too. Haymitch is acting like he still needs to be their Mentor, like he is Katniss's caretaker since her mother is gone. He and Katniss are 19 now, and it is nice to have neighbors, and friends, but they are living with each other, they could manage to work things out together now. He shakes his head. "I think you should probably talk to Jo," Peeta says.
"She's not going to get her feelings hurt because Katniss left dinner early," Haymitch says. "She's been through much more awkward dinners in the Capitol."
Peeta wonders if Haymitch is really this dense, or if he is purposely trying to dismiss the topic. But Peeta won't be swayed. "She left because you only looked at Katniss the entire dinner."
Haymitch finishes his drink, taking his time buttering the bread probably so he wouldn't have to look Peeta in the eye. "What are you talking about?"
Peeta sighs, sinking back into his seat. He wants to go check on Katniss. He wants to clean up the kitchen or water the plants in the garden, but he will play counselor to Haymitch, because he's alive right now thanks to Haymitch. "You left her behind in the arena," he says, "And I get it, Katniss was the priority. But then at the assassination, you ran to Katniss, and I'm sure that's why she left for 2."
"Of course I did, I was responsible for Katniss. Jo and I… we aren't anything." He shoves the bread in his mouth, eating like he hadn't all day. Perhaps this was his first meal. If so, Peeta feels bad for the way it ended so abruptly. But he doesn't like Haymitch's aversion.
"You know that's not true."
Haymitch swallows, then picks up the soup bowl and finishes his broth. "Thanks for the meal," he says. He doesn't address the conversation any further. "I'll get out of your hair. Goodnight."
Peeta ignores the mess of the dinner and the remains of the day's baking, choosing instead to follow Katniss upstairs. She's in her bedroom, sitting by the window, looking out at the Victor's Village in the evening light. Peeta can see Haymitch making his way back to his own house, and sits down on the edge of Katniss's bed, a few feet away. "Talk to me," he says, as he watches the back of her head. Katniss could be so still, disconcertingly so, as she just sits and stares for hours on end.
"Am I wrong?" she asks. She half-turns towards him, and he can see the quirk of her brow. "Am I the one who's stuck? I just get so angry, at Gale, at the loyalists, at Coin's inner circle, but I feel like I'm the only one. Everyone else has just moved on."
He remembers when hearing her speak this many words at once would have impossible, when Katniss wouldn't dare speak at all to him, let alone share her feelings, so he's glad at least for this. "I don't know," he says. "I think Jo and Haymitch are just pretending to move on, to be honest."
She tilts her head to acknowledge this, then turns back to the window, the vigil she'll keep until long after dark. "Could have fooled me," she says.